A retired San Francisco businessman has started a campaign to send thousands of Rosh Hashanah greetings to Jews in the Soviet Union. The project, originated last year by the Committee for Soviet Jewry in Washington. D.C., was adopted by Harold Light of the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry, who hopes to put the project on a national basis.

Mr. Light has prepared a list of addresses of synagogues in the 62 communities in the Soviet Union that have a Jewish community and has sent the list, together with suggestions for the greetings, to national and local Jewish organizations, local Community relations councils, activists and the Jewish press. Mr. Light said he did not expect all the cards to get through Soviet censors, and he urged that the cards carry no anti-Soviet message, but a simple Rosh Hashanah greeting. He also urged the sending of greeting cards to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev.